14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is inviting customers running its solution accelerator designed to perform readiness assessment migration to join the conversation on the next version of the product. In mid-August 2009, the Redmond-based company released to manufacturing and made available for download Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 4.0 (Build 4.0.2925.0). Following the RTM of MAP Toolkit 4.0, the software giant is moving onward with the development efforts, and starting work on version Next. But on the way there, the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) Facebook Group Page was launched in order to tap the social networking resource that is Facebook.
“Join this community site to share your ideas with other MAP users on how to use the MAP Toolkit for your IT planning and deployment projects for a variety of products such as Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, App-V, SQL Server 2008, Forefront Client Security, and more. Tell your success stories and share with Microsoft team what you'd like to see NEXT in the future release of the MAP Toolkit,” revealed Baldwin Ng (Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit).
In addition to the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) Facebook Group Page, MAP Toolkit users can also join the company’s MAP Toolkit Twitter page. Both efforts are of course set up for the software giant to tap additional sources of feedback on its current products. But as Ng stated, Microsoft is also looking beyond the current technologies that MAP 4.0 was tailored to.
“Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit is an agentless toolkit that finds computers on a network and performs a detailed inventory of the computers using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and the Remote Registry Service. The data and analysis provided by this toolkit can significantly simplify the planning process for migrating to Windows 7, Windows Vista, Office 2007, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, Microsoft Application Virtualization, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and Forefront Client Security and Network Access Protection. Assessments for Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, and Windows Vista include device driver availability as well as recommendations for hardware upgrades,” Microsoft noted.